The Canadian Rockies are one of those places where the landscape does most of the work for you. Glacial lakes so blue they look edited. Ridgelines that stack up behind each other until they disappear into weather. Valleys carved out by ice thousands of years ago and still holding snow in July. I've photographed mountain ranges all over North America, and the Canadian Rockies remain one of the most visually dramatic places I've ever worked. The scale is hard to convey until you're standing in it, and even then the camera struggles to do it justice. These Canadian Rockies photos represent years of return trips, in every season, chasing light and weather and the animals that live up in that country.
The wildlife in the Canadian Rockies is as good as the scenery. Bighorn sheep rams hold tight to the high ridges and rocky outcrops, and if you're patient and your approach is right, they'll tolerate you at surprisingly close range. Mountain goats pick their way across cliff faces that don't look possible. Elk move through the valley floors in huge herds, particularly in fall when the rut is on and the bulls are vocal. Black bears and grizzlies show up along river corridors and in avalanche chutes where the berry crops are heavy. The combination of big mammals in big mountains is hard to beat anywhere in the world.
What I like about photographing the Canadian Rockies is how much variety you can find in a single day. Morning fog lifting off a lake, sidelight on a ram's curled horns by mid-morning, storm clouds building over a glacier in the afternoon, and alpenglow on the peaks at the end of it. The weather moves fast and the light changes constantly. Some of my favorite images from this gallery came from conditions most people would pack up and leave. Snow squalls, heavy overcast, flat grey skies that saturate the greens and blues in ways that sunshine can't touch.
Every photograph in this collection was made on location in the Canadian Rockies. No composites, no sky replacements. What you see is what was there. The mountains and the animals don't need help.
